SYDNEY: A woman has been savaged by dingoes in the Australian desert, with the mining worker describing how she feared for her life as the pack of wild dogs tore flesh from her legs.
Deb Rundle was on her lunch break at a site in the Pilbara region of Western Australia last week when she followed a small dingo after it snatched her phone.
The 54-year-old said she then noticed three other nearby animals, and as she began backing away, they attacked.
“There was blood everywhere on the ground. I just looked at my wounds and ‘Oh my God’,” she told Channel Seven television late Monday from her hospital bed.
“I looked down and thought ‘Oh my God, am I going to die?, are they going to get me down?’.”
Rundle, who will undergo reconstructive surgery to graft skin to her body, said she screamed for 10 minutes before co-workers came to her aid.
“They just wouldn’t let go. I think once they had the taste they just didn’t let go,” she said of the feral dogs, which are native to Australia.
A relative of the woman added: “She had bites everywhere but her head.”
East Pilbara shire president Lynne Craigie said she had never seen a dingo attack like it in her 20 years living in the region.
“Obviously any animal that’s hungry is going to be aggressive but I was very surprised to hear there were three of them sort of attacking in a pack,” she told broadcaster ABC.
Dingo attacks are rare, with just a handful of incidents reported in recent years.
In 2012 a German man was savaged while camping on Fraser island in Queensland state, while a three-year-old and a South Korean woman were bitten in separate incidents on the popular tourist destination known for its dingo population the year before.
A nine-year-old boy was killed by wild dogs there in 2001.
The most prominent dingo case involved baby Azaria Chamberlain who was snatched by one in 1980.
Chamberlain’s mother spent three years in jail convicted of her murder, but was released in 1986 when some of her daughter’s clothing was recovered by chance near a dingo lair.
She fought for decades to clear her name in a sensational case which spawned a Meryl Streep film, with a coroner finally ruling in 2012 that a wild dog took the child.
Woman savaged by pack of dingoes in Australia
Woman savaged by pack of dingoes in Australia
Lunar New Year prayers, robots and festivities usher in the Year of the Horse
- In Taiwan, worshippers heard a temple bell ring 108 times and left flower offerings
- In Hong Kong, people lined up at midnight to light incense and make wishes
BEIJING: People are marking the Lunar New Year on Tuesday with prayers, fireworks and festivities.
The activities ushered in the Year of the Horse, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, succeeding the Year of the Snake.
The Lunar New Year is the most important annual holiday in China and some other East Asian nations and is celebrated outside the region, too.
Robots take the stage of an annual TV show in China
As every year, China celebrated the Lunar New Year with a TV show and once again the humanoid robots were a central part of the performance Monday night.
One of the highlights of the CCTV Spring Festival gala was a martial arts performance by children and robots. For several minutes, humanoids from Unitree Robotics showed different sequences and even brandished swords.
The performance shows China’s push to develop more advanced robots powered by improved AI capabilities.
Temple crowds at midnight in Hong Kong
Incense smoke wafted into the air at a temple in Hong Kong where people line up every year to make wishes for the new year at midnight.
Holding up a cluster of incense sticks, many bowed their heads several times before planting the sticks in containers placed in front of a temple hall.
Fireworks light up skies in Vietnam
Entertainers in Vietnam sang at an outdoor countdown event before multiple fireworks shows at several cities in the Southeast Asian nation, where the festival is called Tet.
Light shows lit up bridges and skyscrapers as the fireworks went off and crowds clapped in rhythm to live pop music performances.
Chinese street fairs in Moscow
People sampled Chinese cuisine from stalls and strolled along snowy streets decorated with red lanterns and dragons as two weeks of events got underway Monday at various venues in the Russian capital.
The third annual Lunar New Year celebration comes at at time of warming relations between China and Russia — ties that have frustrated many European governments because of the war in Ukraine.
A temple bell rings 108 times in Taiwan
The solemn peal of a temple bell rang out 108 times — an auspicious number — as people flocked to the Baoan Temple in Taipei on Tuesday morning.
They lit incense sticks, bowed their heads and left offerings of colorful flower bouquets on outdoor tables on the temple grounds in Taiwan’s capital city.
Argentines join celebrations in Buenos Aires
Thousands of Argentines gathered in Buenos Aires’ Chinatown to celebrate the Lunar New Year and enjoyed dragon and lion dances on the main stage, alongside martial arts demonstrations.
The Chinese immigrant community is among Argentina’s most dynamic, accounting for more than 180,000 people in the South American country.
